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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Advent Calendar Dec 16th - Christmas at School

I remember lots of fun, festive activities at school including the annual Christmas party, learning various Christmas songs, and always the Christmas crafts or a gift for our parents.

Every year, it was tradition at my elementary school for the Kindergarten class to put on a pageant. I have no idea how long we must have spent rehearsing for this but I do remember we sang a couple of songs and each student had to stand in front of the microphone and recite a line from Clement Clarke Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". If I recall correctly, I had to recite this line, "More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name". If I do say so myself, that's a pretty hard line for a five year old (with stage fright) to have to memorize. I know the teachers sent home a small slip of paper with instructions for our moms to help us memorize the line, and I remember my mom practicing with me. Somewhere there are some pictures of this momentous right of passage, but time constraints didn't allow me to track them down. Chances are I was wearing a plaid jumper.

And 30 years later, I still have no idea what "his coursers they came" actually means.